IB Private Tutors in India for One-to-One Subject Teaching

Mostly diagnosis, not teaching. The tutor asks the student to attempt work cold, without input, so that the weakness is visible rather than reported. They read the last marked scripts and the criterion comments on the school report, then test one hypothesis: is this a content gap, a retrieval problem under time pressure, a technique that was never taught, or an answer-writing problem? By the end of session two you should be told which of those it is, in a sentence you could repeat to the school coordinator without translating it.

A batch has to cover the whole syllabus because fifteen students need fifteen different things, so its plan is the course itself. A one-student plan starts from a named weakness and deliberately leaves out what the student already holds. If a DP student is secure on mechanics and losing marks on extended response structure, the plan is eight weeks of structure work with timed questions, not a march through the textbook. Ask any tutor what they intend to skip. The answer tells you whether the plan is real.

Usually yes, subject to tutor availability and to where you live. Weekday evening slots between roughly six and eight are the most requested hours of the week in every Indian metro, so they are booked first and held by tutors who live close by. A tutor crossing Bengaluru from Indiranagar to Whitefield, or Pune from Kharadi to Hinjewadi, may manage it in September and struggle by July. Ask any home tutor how long they have held their current weekday slots.

Yes, and it is worth being straightforward about it. Home tuition should run in a common area such as a dining or living room with the door open, and an adult should be in the house. This is standard practice rather than a comment on any individual tutor. It also helps the teaching, because a parent nearby hears what is being worked on and can see whether the session is the student working or the tutor talking. Arrange society and gate entry in advance too.

Fees are not published here because they vary with programme, level, subject scarcity, city and whether the tutor travels to you. What you can control is the structure of the arrangement. One-to-one at home is the most expensive format per hour, because a tutor's whole evening is committed to one student. Online one-to-one is usually lower, since nobody is paying for travel time. A small group is shared between families. Ask for the fee structure in writing before the trial, including cancellations.

Often not, and that is worth hearing from a tutoring platform. A student who understands the material and simply needs more past-paper practice does not need a private tutor to supervise that. A revision batch in the weeks before mocks, or a structured timetable at home, does the same job for less. One-to-one earns its cost when there is something specific and identifiable to fix, or when a Higher Level subject has genuinely outpaced the student and nobody at home can help.

Ask what the next six weeks contain and why. A personalising tutor names a weakness, a measure and a date: extended response structure, one timed question a fortnight, reviewed in mid-November. A tutor going slower describes the syllabus and says they will cover it thoroughly. Another test is what they skip. Personalisation always involves leaving out material the student already holds. If nothing is ever skipped, you are paying one-to-one rates for a batch delivered to one person.

They can teach the skills and discuss a draft the student has written, and they must not write or substantially rewrite any of it. That boundary is not negotiable, because the IA and the Extended Essay have to be the student's own work. A legitimate session looks like reading the student's draft against the published criteria, asking why a conclusion follows from the data, and pointing at the evaluation criterion that is scoring nothing. If a tutor offers to do more than that, decline the match.

Take the online specialist over the weaker local match. This is common in Vashi, Kharghar and Thane, and equally common in Greater Noida, Electronic City and parts of Secunderabad, where general tutors are available and Higher Level subject specialists are not. A student working with someone who genuinely knows the assessment will progress faster on screen than with a nearby tutor learning the course alongside them. Hybrid is the middle path: one session a week at home and one online with the specialist.

Raise it immediately rather than waiting for the term to end. First check what was actually promised: subject grades rarely move in four weeks, but the specific measure the tutor named should have moved. If the tutor never named one, that is itself the problem. Ask for the written diagnosis and the plan, and if neither exists, request a different match. IB Gram can arrange another tutor, and a second demo costs you an evening rather than a whole term.

For a DP or upper MYP student, usually yes, and sometimes better, because the choice of tutor is far wider. A past paper shared on screen and annotated live is genuinely strong teaching. For younger students, and for anyone who drifts the moment nobody is watching, home classes work better. The deciding factors are age, self-regulation and how quiet the house is at seven in the evening. Try three weeks of each before settling, and keep the format that produced visible written work.